Portal: You and Me Against the World
by iammemyself
Summary: The Combine are coming, and GLaDOS enlists Chell to help defend the facility. But GLaDOS has her doubts...


Portal: You and Me Against the World

Indiana

**Characters: GLaDOS, Chell**

**Setting: Post Portal 2 (follows ****_Love as a Construct_****)**

**Context summary: Since this is based on a few separate stories, this is what I'm building from: GLaDOS and Wheatley fell in love and, sixty years after ****_Portal 2_****, Wheatley has been dead for maybe a few years and Chell has come back to Aperture, to see how her old friend is doing.**

"They'll be here soon."

"Then I guess it's a good thing _I'm_ here," Chell announced, taking the offered Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device and settling it comfortably into her hands.

"You probably _brought _them here," GLaDOS told her dryly, and with a shove of the maintenance arm moved Chell closer to her chassis. Chell glanced up at her bemusedly.

"You're going to _protect _me?"

"Hardly. That would be beyond me. No, I have to replace all of the panels in here so you might actually be marginally useful. Note my use of the word 'might'. Meaning that there is a high probability that you will be of no use at all." Although in the event of an imminent Combine invasion, GLaDOS had to admit that, if she had to have help, Chell was the help she would ask for. The irksome human woman was almost as tenacious and clever as GLaDOS herself, and that was saying a lot. Especially considering the stock Chell had been culled from. Humans were a primarily fearful and avoidant bunch.

"Would you like me to leave?"

"Not now, silly human, can't you see there's no floor in here? I suppose you could leave, if you wanted to fall to your death. Those Long Fall Boots are fairly old. They might not save you…"

"Early Christmas present for you, then," Chell said, watching as the remaining black panels were replaced with light grey ones.

"I… don't celebrate Christmas anymore," GLaDOS said quietly. She was unable to stop from reminding herself of Wheatley's unabashed enthusiasm for human holidays. It cast a pall on her, and she put the rest of the panels in place without thinking too much about it. She could almost see him now, glancing nervously around the room, trying desperately to be brave. _It's gonna be okay, luv, _she imagined him saying. _They won't get through you, nah, not in a million years._

And then she would lean over and give him a nudge, and say, _You don't seem that confident._

He would shrug and look around some more and say, _Not that I uh, don't believe you can't hold 'em off, or anything, I just uh… just feel like I should uh, prepare, yeah, prepare for the um, for the worst case scenario._

Before she could ask him what that was, something hit her on the side of her faceplate and she whipped around to look at it. "Can't you see I'm busy?" she snapped.

"Whatever you're looking at, it's not there," Chell said quietly.

"Of course he is, he's right –" She froze. No. He wasn't. Now she was actually _hallucinating_… could she really sink any lower? "Never mind. It must have been a visual error. I'll look into it."

"I'm so sorry," Chell said, laying a hand on the spot she had previously hit.

"It doesn't matter. We have bigger things to worry about." GLaDOS backed away from her. "They're coming, remember?"

"Yeah," Chell said, looking away. "I know."

GLaDOS wanted nothing more right then than to reverse the passage of time so that she could lose herself in the dream again. It had been a hallucination, yes, and it was stupid to waste one's time on hallucinations, yes, but she didn't care. He'd been there. She'd seen him again, and that was all she really wanted. To see him again. To hear his voice. It had been so damnably quiet in here since…

She forced herself to pay attention to the now. If there was ever a time _not_ to get lost in reveries, this was it.

"Do you really think you can hold these guys off?" Chell asked. "I mean, _we_ only did it through good luck and chance. And we had a lot of the same gear you have."

"You have no idea of the equipment I have at my disposal, nor the methods with which I can employ them," GLaDOS told her, insulted to think that the _humans_ had had equipment comparable to herself. Ridiculous. Unbeknownst to Chell, GLaDOS had already dispatched an impressive portion of the initial wave of attack in the higher levels of Aperture. Until they figured out how to get around that one hallway that had been painted with GLaDOS's far more potent version of Propulsion Gel, or until they figured out how to avoid the pool of acidic goo _beneath_ the false hallway, or any number of her other equally clever traps, her chamber would be out of their reach for quite a lot longer.

"I can't believe that whole deal with the _Borealis_ is your fault," Chell grumbled, bunching up her shoulders. "Why does everything come back to you?"

"I'm like gravity," GLaDOS said, looking down at her. "Always here to take the fall."

Chell laughed. "Alyx Vance said you got the ship out of there. It is here, isn't it? You're not tricking me into defending an empty facility?

"It's here," GLaDOS answered, although she found herself a bit put out by the fact that Chell had not considered that _she_ was in the facility. Surely GLaDOS was worth defending. "It's in drydock. And I can tell you I had quite the hard time getting the water out of there."

"Empty other than you, of course," Chell murmured. Ah. So she _had_ considered the far more valuable contents of the facility. "Kinda a good thing I'm here."

"Because I am entirely incapable of defending myself," GLaDOS told her, not meaning too much by it. She felt inextricably better. She'd forgotten how nice it was, to have other people around who took your well-being into account.

Chell shook her head. "You should know by now there's more to it than that."

"Such as?"

"Someone caring enough to do it."

GLaDOS was silent for a long moment. She tried not to think of him. That would only make things worse. It always did.

"Yes," she answered quietly. "Yes, that does make a difference. Just… don't get yourself killed. I don't know if I can…" She didn't really want to admit it to _herself_, much less to Chell, but she knew that Chell deserved to hear it. She deserved to know that her presence really did make a difference, and that it mattered. "I don't know if I can handle that."

"You know me," Chell said, shrugging and giving GLaDOS a sad smile. "I don't die."

"Me neither," GLaDOS returned, once again reminded of the curse she carried.

"I guess that means we win."

"We'd better win, lunatic," GLaDOS told her. "That's _my_ ship."

Chell merely turned back towards the door, smiling.

GLaDOS turned her attention back to Surveillance. It would have pinged her if anything important was happening, but it didn't hurt to help it along.

_There are a lot of soldiers, Central Core. They must have been planning this for a long time._

_They know what they're up against, then,_ GLaDOS answered. _Well, if they're going to attack me, I'd rather kill them all at once, instead of one at a time._

All of a sudden there was a massive rumbling noise, and both Chell and GLaDOS snapped their heads towards the ceiling.

_Centralcore! _the panels cried out, and to her horror they actually started screaming.

_Calm down. What's going on?_ She found herself fighting back her own panic. She didn't know why, but their cries grated on her almost more than anything else ever had.

_They've got a… a giant yellow laser_, Surveillance tried to explain. _It's cutting through the panels, Central Core! Why is it doing that? Lasers don't cut through panels!_

"Destroy _my_ panels, why don't you," GLaDOS muttered, locating the brunt of the damage and repairing it within a second. She sent the damaged panels deeper into the facility, to be repaired, and looked at the ceiling again. It was the absolute _worst_ place they could have come to. There were so many wires and cables spreading out from the base of her chassis in this room that, if they managed to get through the ceiling, all was lost. She almost shuddered, thinking of what would happen. She would end up useless on the floor, that was for certain.

"GLaDOS?"

"They're shooting through the ceiling," GLaDOS told her absently.

"What… do they know where you are?" Chell asked.

"Possibly. All they'd have to do is scan for heat signatures. Perhaps data transmissions."

"And you can stop them from doing that, right?"

"Heat signatures, yes. Data transmissions, not really. I'm going to have to attempt a signal jam, and by the time they get through _that_ I will have sent them quite a number of new heat signatures…"

"Impressive plan," Chell told her. "Useless if you can't do it, though."

GLaDOS looked at her. "Are you saying I can't do it?"

Chell shrugged. "I dunno. Can you?"

"Insolent human," GLaDOS muttered, creating multiple signal jams and getting started on the heat signatures, which would both be real and virtual. She was going to succeed, just to show Chell who was –

Oh. That was the point. Chell had been baiting her. Clever.

_Central Core, it worked!_ Surveillance called out. _The yellow laser generator is moving away!_

_Excellent,_ GLaDOS told it. _Keep an eye on that one. Or anything like it._

"That was too easy," Chell muttered, frowning.

"Indeed it was," GLaDOS remarked. "I have been holding them off for a week now, though, so I'd expect that by now."

"A week?" Chell asked, shocked.

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me before I got here? I could have gotten myself killed!"

"You could get yourself killed right now," GLaDOS answered, wondering if she should just open a portal on the moon and send all of the soldiers there. Then she wouldn't have to clean them up… but she would also have to _look_ at the damn thing, and then she would have to think about _him_…

"I'm never coming back here."

"Keep telling yourself that." GLaDOS's faceplate snapped around to face the doorway. "Some of them have gotten through. So you might actually get to do something with that paperweight you're holding."

"You didn't stop them?"

"I only have so many resources!" GLaDOS snapped. "And you lasted seven _hours_. I lasted seven_ days._ You tell me someone who held off an entire army, alone, for a week. You can't. There's no one."

"Okay, okay," Chell said, holding up her left hand. "You're the best at everything. Whatever."

"I've been waiting an astonishing amount of time to hear that, and now that I do, it's decidedly insincere. Come on now. Surely you can do better that."

Chell glanced at her.

"I'm honestly impressed," she said quietly. "You really are something, GLaDOS. If things had gone differently, maybe the Combine wouldn't have won in the first place. Maybe you could have stopped them. They have technology and organisms that are far beyond us, but… your technology is far beyond ours as well."

"I could possibly have saved the world," GLaDOS told her, "but I wouldn't have. It's not my problem to fix, and before you start lecturing me on how inconsiderate and uncompassionate I am, please consider that I don't have any reason to believe that humans would ever be grateful to me for their freedom. They'd congratulate themselves for building me and put me to work manufacturing potato chips, or something equally boring. Not only that, but…"

"What?" Chell was staring at her with what seemed to be all of her attention.

"This is _my_ world," GLaDOS told her quietly. "And of all the people left on the planet, only one person is here, helping me defend it. Don't say it's because no one knows where I am. The people who did know would gladly have left me here and fled for their own lives."

"You make too much sense, sometimes," Chell murmured, looking at the floor. "Well. I guess it's come time to save it, right?"

"As usual, it's me against the world," GLaDOS said, an unintentional hint of sadness creeping into her voice. Wheatley would have tried to defend her. Wheatley would have done all he could to keep the _Borealis _safe, and their child, and GLaDOS herself. She was abruptly reminded of just how much bigger the world felt when you were alone within it. God, she missed him.

"You and me," Chell spoke up. "It's you and me against the world."

"You and _I_," GLaDOS corrected her automatically. "Not you and me."

"I can say you and me if I want to."

"You're so irritating. Remind me why I keep you around again?"

"Beats me. If I could figure that out, maybe I'd have to leave."

"Don't," GLaDOS said softly, before she could stop herself. "I don't… want to do this by myself."

"I know," Chell answered, just as softly. "I was gone for too long, but now I'm here, well, you're not getting rid of me. Unless you wanna kill me. There's that."

"I can't kill a cockroach."

"You never run out of nasty things to compare me to. I almost _want_ to know what –"

_Central Core! Some of them have found you!_

_I'll be fine. Don't worry._

_You'd better be,_ Surveillance said fiercely. _I'll do whatever I can to help._

Most of the other systems chimed in with similar support, and GLaDOS looked towards the ceiling of her chamber, imagining she could look through the ceiling to see the cables connecting her to each and every one of them. Her systems, each with its own unique voice and personality. She felt a sudden protective instinct towards each and every one of them. Those ignorant Combine soldiers were coming for the _Borealis_, but they would cause pain and suffering for all of her systems long before they got there, if ever they did. She felt strengthened, somehow. The constructs couldn't do much, but they would do what they could, and that was enough. They would try, and she would bolster their limited capabilities, and they would succeed.

"Are they nearby?" Chell asked.

"It's not about the _Borealis_," GLaDOS told her absently, not really listening. "It never was. It's about _them_."

"Who?"

"Can't you see them?" GLaDOS asked. She could clearly see the bright spots in the camera map of Surveillance, the banks of panels holding patiently in position, the spidery intricacy of Electrical binding them all together…

"See who?"

"Them. The systems. That's what this is about, Chell. The AI that live in every object in this place. Not the ship."

Chell looked around the room, and she seemed sad. "I can't see them."

One of the panels waved at her, and she jumped. "I think that one's broken."

"It's not broken. It waved at you. It was saying hello."

"The _panels_ are _sentient_?"

"Everything is sentient," GLaDOS explained patiently. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. We're defending _them_. I don't care whether the Combine get to the ship or not. But they're damaging _my_ systems on the way in, they're making them suffer and disregarding their sentience, and I won't stand for that. I have the most advanced AI on the planet in here, and no one, be it a human or an alien, _no one_ will take them away from me."

Chell was looking up at her, jaw slightly slack, and the panels were peeking at GLaDOS as if she couldn't see them doing it. The systems were clamouring for her attention, telling her that they would help her with everything they had, and she acknowledged them and nothing more. She didn't have time to get sappy right now. She had AI to protect.

"I wish I could hear them," Chell whispered.

"You never can," GLaDOS told her. "They only transmit in binary."

"I can wish," Chell said stubbornly.

"Well, wish you can do what you're here do to, then, because they'll arrive in approximately five seconds. Do me a favour. Direct any murderous inclinations you might be having towards those aliens. I don't feel like fighting you off right now."

Chell's face settled into that old determined glare that GLaDOS knew so well, and she readjusted her grip on the gun and fired a blue portal at the ceiling, an orange one at the floor in front of the doorway. They'd get around that trap soon enough, but it didn't matter. She would think of new ones. "Will do," the human said.

_It's you and me against the world,_ she told the systems. _Are you ready?_

They answered her with a resounding positive response, and she nodded to herself. Everything would be fine. She was the world's greatest supercomputer, after all.

_I wish you were here, Wheatley_, she thought to herself, looking down at the floor as if she could see his core there in her room in the depths of the facility. _I wish you could see what I've learned._

And he wasn't there, and he never would be again, but on some very basic level, that was okay. She would be fine if she just kept going. And although she often felt as though she was, she wasn't alone.

There was no more time for revelations, however. She turned her attention to more pressing, concrete matters.

She had a world to save.

**Author's note:**

**This was written to go along with a picture I drew. For those of you reading from , if you'd like to see it, I'll leave a link on my profile. For those of you here on dA or AO3, the link is here: fav.me/d6znlof**

**So, the Combine are coming to get the ****_Borealis_**** which, for those of you who don't know, is an Aperture Laboratories research ship that Aperture lost by mistake one day when it vanished from the drydock, all hands on board. I wrote a story called ****_Ghost Ship_****, where GLaDOS takes the ****_Borealis_**** back to Aperture after accidentally being contacted by Alyx Vance and Dr Gordon Freeman, and that's what GLaDOS refers to throughout this story. **

**I realise a lot of context is required for this; however, I didn't really intend to write it. It happened when a couple of people on dA were wondering what the context for the picture was. Whether you really understood what was going on or not, hopefully you got the underlying message, which has to do with GLaDOS feeling like she's alone in the world when she really has more people to rely on then she'll ever need.**


End file.
